


Songmaker

by thegoddamnknightshade



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dreams Made Flesh, F/F, F/M, Multi, Post The Queen of the Darkness, Pruul
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoddamnknightshade/pseuds/thegoddamnknightshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you fear Witch?"<br/>"No. I fear you."</p><p>Pruul, reconstructed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songmaker

**Author's Note:**

> Occurs in the same time period as The Shadow Queen/Shalador's Lady. Just a Territory south.

1/Terreille  
 _Three years ago_

The words, when they came, were a whisper.

“Farangisse,” just a breath, a whisper on the air that barely stirred anything. The Purple Dusk gem at her breast, the smooth round of it encased between two curving bodies, glinted in the light from the fire. “Farangisse, what is it you wanted?” Her caretaker’s eyes shone queerly, the firelight reflecting as if off many facets, as if the red and orange and yellow aimed to burn the brown away. The old woman held up one hand, the skin smooth despite advancing age, and inclined her fingers towards herself. Quietly, the fourteen-year-old girl crossed the room to stand across from her guardian, carefully drawing her long, undyed skirts away from the spidersilk web in its frame.

The girl opened her mouth to ask her guardian once more why she was there. Farangisse held up one hand, the long and tinted nails casting an unsettling shadow on the stone wall behind her, drawing the girl's dark eyes. “I saw you in the web,” she said, gesturing to the cushion across from her. “I am to tell you this, my queenling.” The nickname had never been spoken outside that room. Outside, the girl it spoke of did not exist, buried behind the webs of Farangisse, who was not only a Priestess but a Black Widow.

She bit her lip. It was not becoming to refuse to trust in her guardian. Had Farangisse not kept her safe for the many years of Hayll's rule? Had she and the Warlord Prince who was her sometimes-lover not sacrificed much to see the girl safe? But Farangisse was a heretic, and Jahangir was worse. Did their betrayal of their vows to Queen and Court not mean that they might be inherently corrupt?

Even though she worried of this, she knew that defying Farangisse in this mood would not serve either of them, and she knelt across from her guardian. The papery skin of Farangisse’s fingers on her cheek--water fat, it chimed in her head, the word they used for the girl’s rounded face and the smooth skin that had never been hardened by desert winds--made her shudder, and she opened brown eyes to meet Farangisse’s glazed ones. Darkness and silence held dominion over the pair, Priestess Queen and the Black Widow Priestess who served her.

“You are many things,” sighed the Black Widow at last. She smoothed the pad of her thumb over the curve of the girl's eyebrow; she stared, unblinking, waiting for the words she was meant to hear. She did not move--all too aware of the snake tooth just at the soft spot behind her jaw. Adrenaline made her heart race. She knew Farangisse would never harm her on purpose, but this did not seem like the guardian who had raised her all her life. “Your past reveals your future. Your life, queenling, is composed of dreams.”

Farangisse never spoke in this odd, whining tone. She spoke in choppy sentences, issuing orders as if she were a Queen. The girl flicked her eyes up to where the Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord Prince stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, stonily silent and watching through narrowed eyes. Surely Jahangir would not let her come to any harm. She held his leash; she held the fate of Pruul, if only she came of age. He wouldn't let the only uncorrupted Queen born to Pruul die at the whim of a drug-crazed Black Widow.

That singsong voice cut through her thoughts and she looked back into the Black Widow’s blank eyes. Farangisse stared at a place that the girl could not perceive and said in that unfamiliar beat, as her thumb again chafed over water-smoothed skin: “You are many things, quelling. You are the Mother and the Usurper. The truth seeker, and the conspirator. An unwilling executioner, born from the hearts of dreams. You are earth, and you are more...”

Her voice trailed off into a rattle, and the hand dropped, skimming over the draped fabric of the bodice of Farangisse’s gown. The girl looked again to Jahangir, who pointedly directed his gaze to the mantelpiece over the fireplace. There she saw the open bottle--not of alcohol, but of that Pruulian drug known as tsapho, distilled from she knew not what. It was unsettling, for she knew what it was for. The Black Widows used it to speed their mind, and to give them true dreams, though they nearly never remembered them. They rarely used it for the terrible side effect of overaggression--she directed a terrified gaze to Jahangir, who had a look of such awareness on her face she immediately felt guilty. Of course he would never let anyone harm her. Not even Farangisse. What had been in the web that would have driven Farangisse to take such a risk? “In all things, defiant.”

She made to rise, only to have the Yellow-Jeweled Black Widow grab her arm sharply. She froze, felt the bruising strength of Farangisse's arm, and did not move. “You will see,” rasped Farangisse, her eyelids drooping. “You. Will. See.” Finally, the Black Widow Priestess released her grip, a red handprint on the girl’s arm where her palm had been. Jahangir, in an effortless motion, destroyed the Widow’s web, and gathered the fainted woman into his arms.

“Jahangir,” the girl said, “What did she mean?” The man, ever silent but when there was need, shrugged. She knew that meant he did not know, and she choked on what might have been a sob. “I understand,” she said.

The words beat a tattoo in her head ( _mother... usurper... executioner_ ) as the witchstorm descended.

 


End file.
